The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include navigating between user interfaces or content, such as content in a web browser history or levels in a hierarchy of user interfaces. But methods for navigating amongst user interfaces or content are inefficient and do not provide sufficient contextual information for users, which can be confusing and disorienting. In addition, these methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.